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A History of Gaming Platforms: Mattel Intellivision

Despite this flurry of activity, however,
the future of the Intellivision's add-ons were anything but certain. Mattel
Electronics had a management shake-up in mid-1983 and shifted its focus to
software -- including for competing video game and computer systems -- rather
than hardware.

This shake-up took priority away from
initiatives such as the ECS and
Intellivoice; only the Intellivision
consoles would continue to receive advertising and software support. In the
end, only a music keyboard add-on and five cartridges were released
specifically for the ECS.

Following industry-wide losses from The
Great Video Game Crash and too many costly dalliances in hardware development,
Mattel Electronics was closed in January 1984, and its assets sold to a
liquidation company owned by Terry Valeski, who was previously Mattel
Electronics' Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales.

In addition to
handling old inventory, Intellivision, Inc., sold some complete, but previously
unreleased cartridges.

Once most of the old Mattel Electronics inventory was
sold, Valeski bought out Intellivision Inc.'s remaining assets from the other
investors and formed INTV Corporation.

INTV Corporation hired former Mattel
Electronics programmers to produce new Intellivision games. The company also
released the INTV Master Component
(called INTV System III and
INTV Super Pro System, among
other names), which was based on the easier to reproduce Intellivision Master Component, but
with minor cosmetic changes.

Like Atari's 2600 Jr., INTV's system was marketed as a low-cost alternative
to the newer and more powerful systems of the day, with the main console
selling for less than $60 and many of the games for less than $20.

INTV
continued to produce new product up to 1990, when the company filed for
bankruptcy protection, closing its doors for good in 1991.

During INTV's operation, Mattel did not
remain idle. The toy company became involved in the video game industry again
by affiliating with Nintendo in 1986.

Mattel not only produced new software and
peripherals for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), but also handled
distribution throughout Europe in 1987 and Canada
from 1986 to 1990 on Nintendo's behalf.

Although most of the 1990s were quiet
on the video game front for Mattel, in 1999 the company acquired a major
computer software publisher named The Learning Company, but gave it away a year
later after incurring heavy costs associated with the acquisition.